Bill Maher is not a religious man. He goes out of his way to make it abundantly clear that he is an equal opportunity hater of all religions.

And yet … the one thing that will drive him to pray, even idiomatically?

“I pray for good surf because it’s so important to me,” Maher said in a phone call from Los Angeles ahead of his ninth annual pair of New Year’s concerts on Oahu and Maui.

Maher loves to bodysurf — he grew up learning from his father “in the verdant seas of New Jersey,” he said — but he only does it once a year because nowhere he goes has water that can match Hawaii’s.

“It is one of the great pleasures of my life,” Maher said. “I do wish there was a cleaner ocean where I live. If there was I would do it here more often, but I really do it just this once a year in Hawaii.”

This year, he’ll have some company in the water.

Sarah Silverman and Bobby Slayton are the other comedians on the bill in a tradition that is in its fifth year.

SILVERMAN, CALLING from L.A., expressed excitement at a chance to do some boogieboarding while here. Though she had a bout with melasma the last time she visited — “the sun is not my friend,” she said — she eventually “threw it all away and went boogieboarding all day,” she said.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my god, this is like magic, like flying.’”

Maher and Silverman have a friendship that goes back to the ’90s, when they met through another sport — weekly pickup basketball at the home of legendary comedian Garry Shandling, who died in 2016. Silverman made recurring appearances on Shandling’s HBO hit “The Larry Sanders Show” and Maher and Shandling had known each other since the ’70s. Through the years, Silverman has appeared on both of Maher’s panel shows — “Politically Incorrect” (which ran from 1993 to 2002) and “Real Time” (a fixture on HBO since 2003).

“I just adore him,” Silverman said, of Maher. “He’s such a kick. It’s just the way he’s political and he has his strong feelings, and if you disagree with him, he’ll still be your friend.”

Silverman grew up in New Hampshire wanting to be an actress and found her way there through standup, raised on albums from Woody Allen and Steve Martin.

“I went to this great high school. My dad sent me to this school when I was a sophomore … it was like the private school we all made fun of in public school. I didn’t wanna go and I ended up totally blossoming there,” Silverman related. “It was cool to be smart there. I learned critical thinking, (not just to) memorize and spit back stuff, but to have an opinion on what you learn.

“There would be assemblies on Mondays and Fridays and sometimes they’d give me three minutes to do standup. It really cultivated people’s talents. Then I went to summer school in Boston between junior and senior year, and I did open mic.”

She eventually made her way to New York and then Los Angeles, where she made it big as a standup before becoming an accomplished actress.

Silverman and Slayton also met in the ’90s in L.A. They were booked back-to-back at The Laugh Factory in L.A., shooting a Showtime special. Silverman said she bombed, but Slayton “spent the first half of his set sticking up for me. He didn’t even know me, and I was touched by that.”

Completing the triangle, Maher and Slayton met at The Improv comedy club in Los Angeles, though Maher came up through the New York comedy scene and the New York native Slayton through San Francisco’s.

“Eventually, everybody winds up in L.A. and everybody knows each other,” Slayton said.

SLAYTON HAS visited Hawaii many times over the years, though he said in a recent call from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., that he hasn’t performed here in about 40 years. He watched Maher announce his Hawaii guests over the past four years and got jealous as comic after comic that were friends of his would get the invite — Jeff Ross, Margaret Cho, Carol Leifer.

He figured his time would come eventually, and it did this year, as a replacement when fellow veteran standup Larry Miller had a scheduling conflict.

This is his first time back since before his wife’s death in 2016, which caught him and their daughter, Natasha, off guard. It also devastated his act, much of which was about his marriage. Worse, his finances at the time were such that he had no choice but to hit the road soon after.

“It wasn’t like Henny Youngman — ‘Take my wife please’ — he did that joke 30 years after she died,” Slayton said. “The wife stuff was more real and I couldn’t really do it, it wouldn’t ring true anymore. So I came up with a couple of jokes about her death. They were kinda hard to do, because I’d choke up.”

Slayton’s work now mostly consists of acting roles and touring on his standup. In the can and due for release next year are the Woody Allen film “Rifkin’s Festival” and an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Recently he’s been making the 45-minute drive down to L.A. to prepare for his tweener sets in Hawaii. He’s used to doing five minutes of standup on TV or an hour when he headlines. Slayton said he has been working to put together the 20 to 30 minutes he will do here.

Slayton doesn’t work politically the way Maher and Silverman do, though he has opined that President Trump is giving political incorrectness a bad name: “There’s a difference between saying things that are politically incorrect and things that are irresponsible and stupid,” he told the Las Vegas Review Journal.

He said he will mostly leave politics to Maher and Silverman.

MAHER, OF course, has no shortage of opinions about politics.

For one, Maher believes the Democrats should choose a moderate to try to unseat Trump. He shuns the label of “centrist” that many have slapped on front-runner Joe Biden and others.

“There are no centrists in the Democratic party. They’re all center-left. They’re all progressives,” Maher said. “Joe Biden is a progressive. Amy Klobuchar is a progressive. Pete Buttigieg is a progressive. So it’s not like we’re electing a (West Virginia Senator) Joe Manchin. …

“It’s so easy to win this election. It really is. All you have to do is put up for office someone who doesn’t scare people … the voter who is turned off by Trump but still might vote for him. You don’t wanna scare that person.”

Silverman seems to feel the opposite. Though she sits firmly in the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” camp, her favorites are on the more progressive side.

“I’d be psyched about anyone. I love Bernie again, and I love Elizabeth Warren, and I love Cory Booker,” Silverman said. “If you look at his entire history, it’s so impressive. … And I like Julian Castro. I don’t wanna get behind one person because I’m really rooting for a bunch of them.”

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BILL MAHER’S 9TH ANNUAL NEW YEAR’S COMEDY EXTRAVAGANZA

Featuring Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman and Bobby Slayton

>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall

>> When: 8 p.m. Tuesday

>> Cost: $45.50-$95.50

>> Info: ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000

>> Note: Additional performance at8 p.m. Monday, Maui Arts & Cultural Center; $79.50-$99.50, mauiarts.org, 808-242-7469